Hector Sants, former chief of City watchdog, being courted to help restore Barclays's shattered reputation

Hector Sants, the former chief of the City watchdog, is being courted to help restore Barclays’s shattered reputation.

The scandal-hit bank wants Sants to look after compliance and regulation, making him the ultimate poacher turned gamekeeper.

The news casts doubt over the future of Mike Walters, Barclays’ hapless compliance chief who has managed to cling on to his job despite a string of scandals.

His credibility may have been fatally
undermined when he told an influential banking commission he was not
responsible for compliance.

It is thought he will either be moved aside or will play second fiddle to Sants.

Barclays
wants the 56-year-old former investment banker, who quit as the head of
the FSA earlier this year, to play a key role in rebuilding its own
credibility.

Unlike
Walters, he would be given a seat on the bank’s executive committee –
which is one rung below board level. Chief executive Antony Jenkins and
finance director Chris Lucas sit on the committee as well as the board.

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If
Barclays manages to secure Sants’ services, it could make life
uncomfortable for the old guard which managed to survive the Libor
interest rate rigging scandal.

This includes the head of the investment bank Rich Ricci, who was one of ousted chief executive Bob Diamond’s closest allies.

Sants
– who riled the City when he told firms they should be ‘frightened of
the FSA’ -– has become a bogey man figure for the bank.

He left the FSA in June – the same month it dished out a £59.5m fine to Barclays. In
September, the Treasury Select Committee produced correspondence which
revealed that Sants had raised concerns about the aggressive culture at
Barclays when he was informed of Bob Diamond’s elevation to chief
executive at the end of 2010.

Sources
at Barclays stress his appointment is not a done deal, as accountancy
firm Deloitte is also thought to be competing for his services.

BARCLAYS
and Absa Group, one of South Africa’s top four banks, said they planned
to combine their Africa operations in a £1.3bn deal. The transaction
would see Absa acquire Barclays’ operations in nine African countries in
a share deal that would raise Barclays’ stake in the South African bank
from 55.5 per cent to 62.3 per cent.